


A Brain, an Athlete, a Basket Case, a Princess, and a Criminal

by samescenes



Category: Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Gen, OT5 Friendship, POV Outsider, i cannot believe that kids actually show up for detention on a saturday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-04-16
Packaged: 2020-01-14 19:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18483067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samescenes/pseuds/samescenes
Summary: Karen got caught smoking, and now has to pay for all time, apparently.





	A Brain, an Athlete, a Basket Case, a Princess, and a Criminal

**Author's Note:**

> I watched this movie the other day for like the fourth time, and so two years after release I give you...THIS.

Karen was caught smoking behind the maintenance shed, and she will have to pay for that for the rest of her life, apparently. Well, that and a failing Chem grade, but when is she ever going to need to balance an equation involving magnesium, honestly? She’s thinking about writing a letter to the PTA about it. “Potassium explodes in water: it is really that great?” It will be her magnum opus, her Citizen Kane.

But Saturdays in detention aren’t as bad as she first had feared. She hides a magazine in her textbook, or does doodles in the margins of her Chemistry workbook, and honestly sometimes the teacher just gives up so she takes out her phone and goes down a Wikipedia spiral about Alexander the Great. 

Also, on Saturdays she gets to watch the Breakfast Club make eyes at each other.

Today, they slink in separately. Trini is first - she’s always first, actually, waiting outside the door for Carl, the janitor, to unlock it. Karen arrived early once, too, her mom dropped her off before a hair appointment, and Trini was already there, sitting with her back against the big double doors, head tilted back, beanie pulled so far down over her forehead Karen assumed she was napping. But then Karen’s sneakers squeaked on the linoleum, and Trini’s eyes snapped open.

“Hey,” Karen had said, but all Trini did was grunt. Carl came around the corner soon after, and Trini waited until Karen took a seat before she chose one on the opposite side of the room. 

This Saturday, Billy is next, exactly five minutes early. He and Trini fist bump and nod at each other. He doesn’t say anything, which is a new thing for Billy. He sits down at the desk next to her, takes his books out, and lines them up at right angles to each other. He leaves his pencils, for now. 

Trini scrapes her chair back so she has enough room to put one leg up on her desk, and stretch one leg out over Billy’s. She tips her head back, pulls her beanie down low, and seems to be set to go for the classic Trini maneuver of falling asleep anywhere, even over Billy’s squawks. 

But then the golden boy, Jason Scott, comes in, flinging both doors open in true dramatic fashion. Karen isn’t going to lie, once upon a time those mascara’d eyelashes did make her heart dip in her chest, but she’s older now, and wiser, and has no time for boys with daddy issues. Jason doesn’t even look at her, though, making a beeline for the corner occupied by Trini and Billy. He’s as loud as Billy was quiet.

“Hey kids,” he says, sweeping Trini’s foot off Billy’s desk. It takes a workbook with it, but he picks it up and lines it up with Billy’s other books before Billy can even start to look concerned about it. 

“Watch it,” Trini says, which would sound argumentative to anyone who hasn’t watched this weird little group for going on three weeks now. Her arms are crossed and brows drawn, but her face clears when Jason perches on her desk and draws her to him in a one-armed hug. Her face mashes into his side, right at the hip.

“What’s got our sweet little Didi in such a mood this morning?” Jason says to Billy.

“She didn’t get enough sleep,” Billy says. “I keep telling her -”

“I’m so tired,” Trini moans, muffled by Jason Scott’s flannel shirt. 

“Billy does keep telling you to go to bed earlier,” Jason says.

“First of all, how dare you,” Trini says. She extricates herself from Jason. “I am a creature of the night.”

“Sure you are,” Kimberly Hart says.

Kim is apparently...a ninja? Karen is startled so bad she nearly falls out of her chair, but none of the gang seem to notice bar Kim, who shoots her a sweet apologetic smile, and goes right back to trying to hip-check Trini into giving up half her seat so they can share. Kim fist-bumps Billy and they smile at each other - radically different from the absent, half-formed thing Kim lobbied at Karen. And Karen can’t even hate her? Honestly, everything about Kimberly Hart makes Karen burn with envy, and yet. She just wants Kim to come over for a slumber party and they can tell each other secrets, like how Karen set her mom’s rose bush on fire, and Kim can tell her about her clearly impending gay panic.

Karen lifts her magazine-within-a-textbook to just under her line of sight so she can spy on them easier. Other kids are starting to filter in now, so she doesn’t need to be as surreptitious, but getting caught would be highly embarrassing - plus she read a thing where the subject changes their behavior if they know they’re being observed. She’s practically David Attenborough, for real.

At a couple minutes past nine, their schlubby teacher stumbles in. Karen doesn’t even know his name. She wonders if detention duty is assigned, or if you volunteer for extra pay. This guy looks like both could be equally true: he’s at the bottom of the totem pole, and also badly in need of a new car and wardrobe. He slaps his worn satchel on the desk, and barely looks up from getting his laptop and a creased paper folder out of his bag.

“Alrighty guys, you know what you’re up to,” he says, and Jesus, he _sounds_ worn-down, from the very tip of his scuffed Oxfords to the ends of his damp, curly hair. Karen has nothing but sympathy in her soul for this sad, sad man.

“I am available to help for any questions you may have,” and here, he looks up, and sees Trini and Kim and Jason, “from your _separate_ desks.”

With an exaggerated smacking sound, Kim kisses her own hand and presses it to Trini’s cheek. She gets up in one smooth motion, and takes the unoccupied desk behind Trini. Grinning, Jason does the same, kissing his hand and pressing it to Trini’s other cheek. Trini scowls at Jason as he takes the seat behind Billy.

“There are plenty of available seats,” the teacher says. “You do not have to sit so close to each other.”

“We good,” Kimberly says.

“It might even help you concentrate,” the teacher says.

“We’ll be fine, sir,” Billy says, his face the very picture of innocence. The teacher crumbles under the full focus of Billy’s seemingly guileless respect.

Karen’s two rows over and one row back, so she can just hear it when Kim turns to Jason and whispers, “Where’s -” when one of the windows on the left side of the room cracks open. They’re the high, wide kind, with panes of glass that open inwards: to climb through you’d have to do an extreme chin-up, then scoot through a very narrow opening on your stomach, then be careful the glass doesn’t bang shut as you descend the other side. Karen might just have been able to reach the window jamb on her tiptoes, but the way the fifth member of their boy band tumbles through, he doesn’t have the same height challenges as her. He practically vaults through the window in some effortless Olympics-level gymnastic shit, catching the window and shutting it gently behind him. His landing made absolutely no noise at all; the teacher doesn’t look up from turning his laptop on.

“He’s here,” Jason says, deadpan.

His name is Zack something-or-other, Karen knows. He’s lived in Angel Grove all his life, because she can remember seeing him around when she was a kid, but he pretty much disappeared around the time everyone started high school. She’s seen him more in the past month - both in detention and around school - than she has in the past two years.

On his way past, he tugs on one of Trini’s curls, winks at Kim, fistbumps Billy, and swoops in to kiss Jason on the forehead before Jason can bat him away. Jason scrunches his nose at him as he takes the seat on the other side of Jason, but Zack just makes an exaggerated kissy face and smirks.

“All right, roll call,” the teacher announces, looking up. He blinks when he sees Zack, but quickly looks away from Zack’s combative glare.

As the teacher goes down the list of names, Karen watches Jason soundlessly scoot his desk closer to Kim’s, so he can reach into her bag and pull out the Bio textbook she’s yet to even touch. Kim rolls her eyes, but takes it when Jason pokes her with it. 

Jason’s facing away from Karen, so she can’t tell if he says anything, but she can read Kim’s mockingly grumpy expression when she cracks open the textbook. 

“C’mon Kim, we don’t want to be in detention forever. Which we will be if you don’t start passing Bio,” Trini whispers from in front. 

“You could literally leave at any time,” Kim says - which, actually, may be true? Karen doesn’t think she heard the teacher call Trini’s name on the roll. Just when this little quintet couldn’t get any weirder.

“But I’d miss my boo,” Trini says.

“And Zack has to start passing everything,” Billy says, and Zack groans, which finally makes the teacher look up, but they all have their books out now, and at least Kim and Billy appear to be writing things, so the poor guy just puts his head back down, choosing to live to fight another day.

“Don’t remind me,” Zack says. “I have a make-up English exam on Tuesday.”

Jason pointedly looks at Zack’s desk, where his Biology textbook is cracked open to the table of contents. 

“Me and Kim are co-studying,” Zack says. “Biology meld-melding. I speak English good, so no worries.”

“You can come over to mine Monday afternoon, if you want,” Billy says. His pencils are all out in a row, and ordered, and he passes the end one to Zack, who takes it to write something in his workbook. “I did that exam three weeks ago. They change the questions, but not much.”

“Make it straight after school, and we’ll go to the pit later,” Jason says. Trini, inexplicably, grins, and looks behind her at Kim just as Kim raises her eyes to look at Trini. Kim makes the universal ‘watching you’ gesture, pointing two fingers at her own face, and then, very emphatically, at Trini’s. 

“You’re going down,” Kim mouths.

“Try me,” Trini mouths back.

Ugh, gamers.

Karen looks back at her magazine, trying to decide if she cares about _Game of Thrones_ spoilers. She probably does. She looks at the teacher. She looks back down at her magazine.

She pulls out her phone.


End file.
